Friday, May 04, 2007

Writing Life

Wow, launching two books in six months is a huge energy/time commitment! I've enjoyed it, but I'm ready for a slightly quieter schedule--at least until fall, though I will be at the summer VC residency and SCBWI National in LA. I have five events still to go this month, but they're all local and ready to roll. My travel schedule is already fairly booked for next academic year, except for the late spring. I'm trying to scale down my responsibilities in hopes of reclaiming that elusive thing I've heard called "a life."

My current creative focus is E. DW sent a revision letter while I was at TLA, and I'm just this week really settling into it. I followed my traditional approach. I rewrote the letter in a call-to-action sort of way. Then I wrote a one-page summary of the story. Then I broke that into chapter summaries, looking for places to add more character development and to streamline the plot.

Next I'm going to re-key the mss into a new document, which will take a while (even with cuts). It's about 50,000 words. GLS was mystified by this, as he would just cut whatever he didn't need. But this will help me to fully get back into the characters and reorganize the structure.

New aspects of my life include reader mail related to Tantalize (Candlewick, 2007). The main question is whether the story will continue (I certainly hope so). As a group, they're mostly age sixteen and up (though I hear from the occasional middle schooler). About half are adults older than the traditional YA audience, say, twenty-five plus. It's almost all female, and they're fairly enthusiastic horror/gothic fantasy fans--some into paranormal romance but the majority enjoy the more traditional genre stuff.

About Me

New York Times & Publishers Weekly best-selling, award-winning author the Tantalize series, the Feral series and other critically acclaimed fiction for young readers. She/her. MFA Faculty, Vermont College of Fine Arts. Board member, We Need Diverse Books. Ohonvyetv!